Security News > 2022 > February > Researcher fully recovers text from pixels: how to reverse redaction
A researcher has demonstrated how he was able to successfully recover text that had been redacted using the pixelation technique.
Further, the researcher has released a GitHub tool that can be used by anyone to reconstruct text from obscure, pixelated images.
This week, Dan Petro, Lead Researcher at offensive security firm Bishop Fox has demonstrated how he was able to completely recover text from an image redacted via the pixelation method.
After applying his magic, the researcher managed to fully reverse the text sent to him.
Existing tools like Depix do provide similar functionality for pixelated text blocks, but fall short in real-world scenarios, according to the researcher.
Text masked using the same background color as that of the text body itself can be trivially revealed when highlighted.